One of the reasons the public has a hard time making science-based decisions, to my mind, is the lack of broad understanding that scientific research is not the process of revealing crystalline truths, but rather a journey toward understanding, with lots of bumps, false turns and rarely a final end point. The new blog is precisely about such explorations, providing a lens on field studies as they are unfolding. I’ve tried to bring fieldwork into the open here on occasion, but Scientist at Work will do this every day.

Journalism, by focusing so often on today’s “front-page thought,” ends up producing what I’ve described as a kind of whiplash effect, whether the subject is coffee and cancer or CO2 and climate. While the public sometimes perceives fights over climate findings as a reason to sit back, and some stasists exploit disputes to foster inaction, reasoned argument is normal, and the force that separates durable conclusions from flawed assertions.

As often as not, the accumulated knowledge includes as many “known unknowns” as those elusive things called facts. While the basic picture of a human-warmed climate is clear, for example, vital details remain persistently uncertain, including such vital questions as the pace and extent of warming and the resulting rise in sea levels.

The more readers understand the process behind discovery, with all its faults and merits, the more likely they are to appreciate the value of hard-won understanding and choose policies or behaviors even in the face of whatever uncertainty remains.

Another great merit of the new blog is that the media and scientists and their host institutions will need increasingly to find creative partnerships to continue telling the unfolding story of science as old models for specialized journalism erode. I’ll be a regular reader.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.